The Doubted

by Shiloh Walker

  “Are you sure?” he whispered, pressing his mouth to her ear.

  “Yes.”

  The room whirled as he caught her around the waist with his arm and lifted her.

  His mouth took hers again, rough and demanding.

  Bed…she thought blearily.

  But instead of the bed, she felt the cool, hard surface of the wall and she arched closer, rubbing against the heavy length of him.

  A guttural noise escaped Dev as he kissed his way down her neck, pausing to rub his lips along the line where the seat belt had marked her.

  She whimpered when he closed his mouth around her nipple. His mouth was a sin—hot and sure, his teeth scraping against her flesh in the sweetest possible way.

  One hand smoothed up her thigh, caught her hip and pulled her in closer. She gasped at the contact and then, with a desperation that might have shamed her had she been able to think, she said, “Please… I need to feel you inside me.”

  His entire body shuddered.

  And in the next moment, he eased back, studying her face.

  Her legs wobbled when he relaxed his hold around her waist, and then they all but melted as he reached for the button on his jeans, then the zipper, staring at her the entire time.

  Dazed, she watched him free his cock, giving it one careless stroke. His blue eyes burned into hers and the heat of his body left her feeling scorched.

  “Um…” her voice cracked. “The bed?”

  “Fuck the bed.” He boosted her up and she automatically curled her legs around his hips.

  The first brush of his cock against her had her tensing.

  “Nyrene?”

  “Please…”

  Dev would kick his own ass for this.

  Later.

  The hot, wet kiss of her pussy against the head of his cock had rational thought floundering to a halt. He didn’t think about the cramped room, or the hell chasing them, or the bed that he could have her on in five seconds.

  He only thought about her.

  She was tight and he pulled back before surging inside her again, her husky moan tripping down his spine like a caress. Her hands gripped the back of his head, nails biting into his skin, and it wasn’t enough.

  With every stroke, she gripped him tighter, straining against him, her eyes dark and wide, locked on his. He caught one hip, lifted her.

  Then, watching her, he stroked. The need to take her harder, ride her until they both lost themselves, was brutal, but he had a stronger need.

  The need to chase away the darkness in her eyes. A darkness he had brought into her life.

  A need to make this last, because it was the sweetest pleasure he’d felt in ages…maybe ever.

  A broken sob trembled in the air and he dipped his head, brushed his mouth across her lips, once. Twice.

  “I want to feel you come,” he whispered against her lips.

  Her breath caught and hitched and her eyes gazed into his with hunger…and hesitation.

  It was that look, that feminine look of nerves and need, that let him wrap the reins around the vicious cut of his desire. Shoving away from the wall, he took the few short steps to the bed and then went to his back. Her lush curves, her solid weight, had every nerve in his body singing, but he didn’t flip her to her back and drive into her.

  Urging her upright, he said, “Ride me, Nyrene.”

  A blush pinkened her cheeks. Then, with her teeth sinking into her lower lip, she braced her hands against his chest and started to move.

  It was a slow, awkward rhythm at first, but after a few seconds that had his eyes crossing, she found her pace. The sensation of her hips rolling on his, the snug clasp of her pussy around his cock, had Dev groaning.

  As he arched up to meet her, he gazed at her, imprinting the sight of her, the feel of her, on his memory. Her breasts, those large, soft breasts, were pushed forward by the position of her arms, and the sight of her tight nipples—a warm, delicious brown—had him tangling one hand in her hair, tugging her down.

  Nyrene whimpered and then she cried out as he licked her right nipple in a slow, lazy circle before drawing it into his mouth.

  He scraped his teeth lightly over the sensitive skin. An excited gasp escaped her lips.

  She fell forward. Her nipple popped out of his mouth and he tipped his head back, staring into her eyes—dark and dazed.

  With her elbows braced by his shoulders, she started to move. He drove up, matching her rhythm.

  The sound of flesh slapping against flesh filled the room, her ragged sighs mingling with his low groan.

  He felt it start, her climax, and he lashed down the need to come. Her muscles went tight, her body barely moving now. Gripping her hip in one hand, he held her tightly against him and thrust.

  She keened, a low, desperate sound—his name.

  She said his name as she came and it was too much. Dev caught her mouth with his as he orgasmed, the bliss of it, of her, ripping all threads of control from him.

  She had never felt that…replete.

  Not once in her life.

  She’d come close, maybe, or something that resembled close, but it required the use of the showerhead and lots of dirty little fantasies for her to come.

  Nyrene suspected Dev had all but ruined her for the showerhead.

  “I want to do that again.”

  She didn’t even realize she’d spoken until Dev brushed his lips over her neck. “Give me a few minutes and we can definitely do that again.”

  Blushing, she tucked her face against him. Embarrassment twisted inside her, but it paled in comparison to that anticipation that had her shivering against him.

  One strong, rough hand stroked down her back.

  She sighed, feeling more relaxed than she had felt in days.

  Since before the wreck, even.

  That wreck had tripped off everything, but she’d been uneasy for days. She’d worried about her boyfriend for days, and that nagging sensation in her gut was what had her driving by the day she saw him tangling tongues with his new hire.

  Now, though, all of that was gone. Her head didn’t hurt. Her thoughts were clear.

  And—

  Have to hurry. They’ll leave before dawn and I don’t want to try to chase them down again.

  She sucked in a breath and twisted away from Dev, drawing her knees to her chest.

  Eyes closed, she felt it pressing against her head—thoughts that weren’t her own, emotions she couldn’t understand.

  Cold. Calculating.

  This is a lot of money, boys. Our objective is to grab her and if we can keep from scaring her, even better. It’s going to be hard, but if she freaks out and shuts down, it makes the boss’s job harder. Let’s keep the boss happy.

  Grab her. They mean me.

  There were no faces in her mind this time, no scenes of death and blood playing out.

  Just those cool, calculating thoughts.

  “Nyrene!”

  The urgency in Dev’s voice was as effective as a bucket of cold water.

  Lifting her lashes, she stared at him.

  “We have to leave. Now.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Dev didn’t believe in wasting time and he didn’t believe in questioning instinct.

  This time, it was somebody else’s instincts—or whatever he’d call some weird psychic shit—but it didn’t change the rules of the game.

  That had been fear in Nyrene’s eyes and fear required a response. This time, it was flight.

  He wanted, more than anything, to stay and fight, but as long as he was watching over her, then she came first. Before his need to inflict vengeance, before his need to track down whoever was hunting her.

  He’d find a way to make her safe and then he’d deal with everything else.

  They pulled out of the parking lot less than ten minutes after Nyrene had told him they had to leave, and every second of the time between he’d kept one eye on the door.

  Almost five miles lay between t
hem and the motel before he spoke.

  “Are we okay?”

  She stared ahead into the darkness. “How would I know?”

  With a short laugh, Dev said, “How would you not at this point? You’ve been right every other time.”

  She sighed and looked away. “Yeah, right. Lucky. Luck doesn’t last. What are we supposed to do, Dev? We can’t just run forever.”

  He ran his tongue along his teeth and then reached into his shirt pocket. “Here.”

  Nyrene glanced at him and the card he held, but she didn’t take it.

  “She wrote something on the back.”

  “She wants me to call her,” Nyrene said. “That’s insane.”

  “None of the stuff going on right now makes a lot of sense, and you need to find somebody who can help you make sense of it. She seems like a damn good bet, if you ask me.” He paused and then added softly, “This seems like a lousy thing to try to handle on your own.”

  Slowly, she took the card. “I was looking for answers, you know,” she said, her voice reluctant. “I’d been doing some digging around online the night you…”

  She hesitated.

  Tightening his hands on the steering wheel, Dev muttered, “The night I showed up and scared the shit out of you.”

  There wasn’t any response, but he didn’t see much of a need for one. They both knew what he’d done.

  “Did you have any luck finding anything?”

  Nyrene scraped the tip of her nail over the simple black font on the card. “I don’t know. I’d found this one site—they called it The Psychic Portal, but everything went crazy before I could really talk to anybody. Honestly, I’d rather talk to somebody from there than Taige Morgan. She’s…”

  “Strange,” Dev said when Nyrene hesitated yet again. “And yeah, I understand. But look at it this way. She’s a known quantity. She works with the FBI and has…” He grimaced, because he still couldn’t believe he was actually talking about this. Once you eliminate the impossible, he reminded himself. And they’d pretty much done that. “Morgan has closed who knows how many cases. Seems to me she’s a safer bet than talking to people you don’t know.”

  “Yeah.”

  When she said nothing else, he turned over the throwaway cell phone and waited for her to take it.

  Slowly, she did.

  * * * * *

  Oman came out of the motel room, struggling to keep his cool.

  He was damn glad he hadn’t put together any sort of team for this, but there was no way he would have risked that. How could he, considering he was dealing with an unknown in this equation?

  The clerk at the motel had recognized a picture that Oman had shown to him of Deverall, although he claimed not to have seen a woman.

  The strange female who had approached Oman out of the blue had walked around the room, the clicking of her heels muffled on the thin, fraying shag carpet. He’d overheard her talking to the three men who’d been in the truck with her.

  “They’re gone. We barely missed them, but they are gone. Find me something.”

  Then she’d turned and focused a broad smile on him.

  “We were close. We’ll do better next time, but I need to know if you can help me with something.”

  Oman’s gut said to stay the hell away from the woman.

  But somehow, she’d managed to track down Deverall to this motel when nothing Oman had done had panned out. She wasn’t a cop, so he had no concerns she might be working with the federal agent who’d almost busted his very much deceased partner, but she had an angle. He just needed to figure out what it was.

  “I might be able to help. I might not.”

  She continued to watch him with that bright, winning smile.

  “You’ve got a cop watching the house of the woman your boy is with. I just need him to…not be quite so alert for a few hours. I need one of my people to slip inside that house for a little while.”

  “And just why do you need that?”

  “You don’t need to worry about it,” one of the men with her said, coming up from behind him. When he spoke, he clapped a hand over the back of Oman’s neck. “Now do you?”

  Oman’s brain went hazy. He blinked as he studied the woman in front of him, his thoughts falling out of place. Did he? “Do I what?” he asked.

  “Lieutenant Oman,” the woman said, swaying closer, “we need your help to find this cop…and we really need your help to find the woman he’s with. She’ll cause you a lot of trouble. Why don’t you just let us get her out of your hair?”

  “It’s a good idea.” The man behind him squeezed Oman’s neck gently.

  “Yes.” Oman nodded. “It is a good idea.”

  He never even thought to question his easy acquiescence or why he so suddenly felt like it was just a good idea to trust the woman in front of him. He, who tended to trust people about as far as he could throw them, would have happily turned over his weapon to the pretty, smiling blonde in that moment, had she asked him.

  It did occur to her, but they would benefit more having somebody around who could answer questions or maybe clear the legal tape if any arose.

  Besides, these cops had made such a mess already, killing another one just might be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  Giving him a coaxing smile, she nodded at the phone on his belt. “Why don’t you call that cop who’s watching her house? We’ve got a guy in place who can take care of what we need and we’ll be that much closer to getting out of your hair then.”

  * * * * *

  The man’s smile was just as easy as it had been a few days ago. Nyrene couldn’t help but notice that.

  His gaze slid from her to Dev and then back before he pushed off the car and came toward them.

  Before she could figure out what to say, Dev was already talking.

  “You.” The menace in Dev’s voice would have given her pause.

  The man, with his heavy shoulders and roughly cut features, just lifted a brow.

  “Me,” he replied, his tone just as easy as his smile. He dipped his head in Dev’s direction, then nodded at Nyrene. “The name is Crawford. Special Agent Joss Crawford, FBI. I’m a friend of Taige Morgan’s. She’s aware that you’ve got a…situation going on. I’m a little more mobile right now than she is, so…here I am.” He held out his arms and offered a cocky smile. It faded quickly, though, and he slanted a look at Nyrene. “How is your head?”

  She blinked. “My head?” Then she remembered, reaching up to touch the still-aching bruise that bloomed on her face like an ugly flower. She’d all but forgotten about that. Impossible as it was to believe, the pain from being struck had paled in comparison to everything else.

  Considering how bad things could get, she guessed it wasn’t a surprise.

  With a shrug, she said, “It hurts. I’ll live.”

  “It hurts…” He studied her face for a long moment and then nodded. “And yeah, you’ll live. I was talking more about the mess you’ve got suddenly brewing up there, though.” He tapped his forehead.

  Nyrene flushed. Mess seemed too simplistic a description. “I don’t know,” she said. “Part of me is just hoping this is some bad dream and I’ll wake up normal.”

  “What in the hell is normal?” He shrugged off the idea. “So…you talked to Taige. But something tells me that didn’t do much other than bring about more questions.”

  Nyrene nodded, looking away from him to stare at the bustling, crowded parking lot. “Yeah. We only had a few minutes. We’ve got these…” She licked her lips and looked over at Dev before meeting Joss’s eyes once more, uncertain how he’d react if she told him that they’d had to leave the highway and Taige had been the one to abruptly shout, Turn left! “We didn’t have long,” she finished lamely.

  Joss eyed her appraisingly as she thought about the short, terse interval she’d had with Taige Morgan—a woman known pretty much throughout the entire country at this point. They called her the Psychic of the South. There had been a TV
documentary done on her, not that she’d participated or appeared on it, but it was all about cases she’d solved, lives she’d saved. Some of the stories went back to when she’d been little more than a child.

  The conversation had ended abruptly with Taige’s demanding shout—Turn left! Instinct had kicked in and Dev had done that, while Nyrene’s brain went into overdrive.

  Her heart had been racing, her head spinning, but everything had gone eerily, icily cold in the next moment as the loud, staccato blasts filled the air.

  Somebody had started shooting at them.

  They’d been found—again.

  As though he knew exactly what she was thinking, Dev reached down and caught her hand, squeezing gently.

  She squeezed back and when he went to pull away, she didn’t let go.

  Joss continued to eye her narrowly for a long, tense moment. “She warned you about the Portal, right? You need to stay away from there, not talk to anybody who tries to contact you from there.”

  “Yeah.” Rubbing the heel of her hand over her chest, Nyrene wished she could undo the past few days, or even those few minutes when she’d gone poking around on the website. “How can they be tracking me? I didn’t tell them anything.”

  Joss was quiet so long, she didn’t know if he’d answer.

  But then, slowly, he held out a hand.

  She stared at his broad palm and then slowly accepted it.

  Immediately, all the clamor in her head faded away.

  Just like that.

  There was no noise—she’d lived with nothing but noise in her head since these headaches had started right after the wreck. She’d thought that window trick had been helping, but…no. It was like using a paper bag to block the rain.

  For the first time in days, she had silence in her head and no pain.

  “How…” She sucked in a breath. “How did you do that?”

  “Practice.” He squeezed her hand when she would have pulled back. “You’re already figuring it out, aren’t you? What are you using?”